Zara's Dead

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Coteau Books, 2018 - Fiction - 310 pages
From the author of the recent Governor General's nominee in Nonfiction, Where I Live Now, comes a new mystery novel.Fiona Lychenko - now a woman in her late sixties - has spent years researching the death of her high school classmate Zara Stanley, who was brutally murdered at the age of twenty. Determined to solve the crime - something the police weren't able to do - Fiona interviewed everyone she could in her hometown of Ripley, but every trail led to the same dead end. She even published her findings in a book, hoping it would lead to anonymous clues from readers and outliers, and still - nothing. Now, a decade later, Fiona has finally given up hope that the killer would ever be caught.That is until a brown manila envelope turns up under her door and Fiona once again finds herself embroiled in the midst of a controversy so intricate and tangled that one wrong move could be her undoing.Based on the true story of the murder of Alexandra Wiwcharuk in 1962 in Saskatoon, Zara's Dead is the fictional retelling of a very real story, one that has captivated the public and eluded answers for decades.

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About the author (2018)

Sharon Butala was born in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, in 1940. She was educated in small towns in Saskatoon, and at the University of Saskatchewan. Butala gave up work as a Special Educator to become a novelist, short story writer, and writer of creative non-fiction. Her book, The Perfection of the Morning reached number one on the bestseller list in July '94. She is one of Canada's most acclaimed authors. Her first short story collection, Queen of the Headaches, was shortlisted for a Governor General's Award in 1986. Her trilogy of novels, The Gates of the Sun, Luna, and The Fourth Archangel, formed an evocative and highly praised portrait of prairie life. Her most recent short story collection, Fever, won the 1992 Authors Awards for Paperback Fiction. Her first non-fiction work, Perfection of the Morning, was nominated for a Governor General's Award and won the Saskatchewan non-Fiction Award and The Spirit of Saskatchewan Award in 1994.

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